Roots

My name is Cameron. Welcome to my blog. This section of my website is to share experiences, important lessons, and some of the techniques that I have learned throughout the years. I hope this can be entertaining, as well as informative to those who go through it. I haven’t quite figured out how I will do this in terms of when I will make updates or publish articles, but for this one I want to share my roots of when I first got into this hobby, now career (Lord-willing). Thanks for tuning in and I hope you enjoy this segment!

The year was 2015. I had just started my senior year of high school. I had done some woodworking in the past, but I didn’t really go out of my way to build stuff. I had grown up tinkering with wood. I remember creating makeshift boats out of scrap 2x4s that came from my dad’s jobsites—using a dull chisel, a rubber mallet, and the leg of a workbench to act almost as a bench dog. My siblings and I had LEGO sets growing up and we also had Lincoln Logs. All my siblings had been encouraged to build things and use their imagination. Whether those creations were model rockets, paintings, or with LEGOs, building just seemed to be in our blood. And that hasn’t changed for any of us. With that as a background, I had been looking into cabinet making and fine woodworking. I didn’t really know much about it, but I wanted to learn more.

My first project that I did was a small spice cabinet for my mother. I found plans for one on the internet. It was just a small cabinet made with solid pine. The author had painted it white and then distressed it to give it an antique look. I thought it was a perfect first project. It was also a gift for my mother, so I couldn’t ask her or my father for the materials. I ended up using old, pine shelves that came from a library in the school. They were being torn out for new ones. I milled the wood to remove the yellowed, well used finish. I was left with free wood and was ready to build.

Looking back, the cabinet did not turn out great. My mother loved it so that’s all that mattered in the moment. But it didn’t close all the way. When you tried to close it, the door would pop out a quarter inch. I only had one hinge to set the door, and I was too nervous to cut a mortise for it to sit in. I ended up screwing it to the face of the door and the stile of the cabinet. The door sat crooked and felt flimsy when used. The mitered rails and stiles to the cabinet didn’t line up. The gaps in the miter cuts were massive. The whole carcass had been put together using an excessive number of 18-gauge nails. I used no glue in the project and only nails. I had the idea that nails must be stronger than wood glue because they hold houses together. This “logic” had come from the many summers of working construction for my parent’s business.

It might seem that the spice cabinet was a disaster. Sure, it had a plethora of issues. But because of this project, I became hooked with woodworking. I spent every waking hour I could in the school woodshop. Whether it was coming in early before school, staying late after, or even getting into the shop on the weekends, my extra time was well used. I made a lot of projects. Most were crafted from salvaged library shelves, barnwood from local ranches, or—on rare occasions—pallets. (Though we prefer to leave the pallet phase in the past.)

The point I’m trying to make is we learn lots from our mistakes. We shouldn’t quit something or give up the first time something doesn’t go to plan. Rather those mistakes should fuel us to grow and branch out. Sometimes trial and error can be the greatest teacher. In my early days of woodworking, that seemed to be the case. Making the mistakes on the spice cabinet made me change how I do things. The next spice cabinet had two mortised hinges instead of one slapped on the face in the middle. I wish I could say I used less nails, but I didn’t learn about the strength of glue until a number of months later. The next cabinet was milled more carefully. The cuts were more thought out. The cabinet was modified from the first one and it was drawn out prior to building.

Albert Einstein says it best. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” As I progressed through my senior year, many mistakes were made. I remember making a coffee table with reclaimed barnwood. I had a buyer lined up for it. I was going to make money on it. Everything was looking good. I just had to do a coat of epoxy on the table and then it would be done. I did my epoxy pour and spent a few hours getting all the bubbles out of it with a heat gun. I left that night excited to be selling one of my pieces. However, I had no clue about the disaster that I would find in the morning. When I woke up the next morning, I went to check it before classes started. The cure time was 8 hours, so plenty of time had passed. I went to rub my hands on it expecting to feel the smooth surface. It was still tacky. I went to class and assumed it would be good by lunch. I checked at 12:00 and it was still tacky. Two days passed and it had not changed. As I found out later, it was because the two-part epoxy had not been mixed right. Not enough hardener was used. It was a complete loss. I couldn’t do anything about it. The piece sat for a few more days, and it ended up going to the county dump. I was irate. All this time wasted. All this material wasted. All the epoxy wasted. A gallon of Epoxy cost $50 at this time. Half of it had gone to complete waste. It was a hard lesson in the moment, but I learned the importance of mixing two-part epoxy accurately. This was one mistake I never wanted to repeat.

Every misstep sharpens technique.

We all start somewhere. Maybe it’s not woodworking. Pursuing your goals and dreams will have many trials. Just because you make a mistake doesn’t mean you should quit. Mistakes should drive us to continue learning and improving. They should fuel your growth, shaping each new attempt into something better.

What we shouldn’t do is disregard them and keep trying the same thing, expecting different or improved results. That’s delusional to think and act that way. True progress comes from reflection, adaptation, and the willingness to keep improving.